A memoir of growing up in New York in the 1930s and in Ireland in the 1940s. McCourt tells of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums - too many children, too little money, his mother barely coping as his father's drinking bouts brought the family close to disaster.

Accolades

Winner of Whitaker Platinum Book Award 2001.
Winner of Best of the Bestsellers 1998.
Winner of Pulitzer Prize Biography Category 1997.
Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Biography 1997.
Winner of Royal Society of Literature Award 1996.